Love suffers long and is kind:
love does not envy; loves does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not
behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not
rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. The Apostle Paul, I Corinthians 13: 4-7
Chalet L'Abri, February 2004
Winter's fickle
weather has been on display these days with the mercury falling below the freezing mark.
But I remind myself that spring is on its way. Weather students tell us
that spring in North America begins advancing northward in waves at the average rate of fifteen miles per day, sweeps around
us, and floods away into Canada. The seasons, like great ocean tides, ebb and
flow across the continents. A micro observer poet, E. B. Browning, saw a tiny
mountain gorse abloom in winter and derived this lesson:
Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms,
Do ye teach
us to be glad When no summer can be had?
Ye, whom God preserveth still, Set as lights upon a hill;
Tokens to the wintry earth
that beauty liveth still.
Patience, I say; spring cometh!
Woodpeckers of several species have been frequent visitors here in my woods.
They are among the first birds in late winter to migrate northward. So
I bless them and take hope.
I
began this February meditating on the rich mine of this months greatest theme the attributes of love. None I believe can eclipse Pauls definition of love in his letter to the Corinthians. Often I turn to the words and wisdom of another favorite writer, Eugene C. Kennedy. Love lasts, he wrote. St. Paul and our own experience tell us, but we have never taken this truth as seriously
as we should. Love endures, carries on its effects in us, and continues to be
powerful well beyond the moment or the relationship in which it is experienced. Love that we have really known from another
lives on in us even when the other has left us through death or separation. It
is like a fire in us that burns brightly to light our way and warm us for the days when we are alone or under stress. It kindles our own motivation and our own power to love; we can keep giving love away
without losing any of it. Martin Buber, the Jewish religious scholar and philosopher wrote: Those who love bring God and the world together.
What
is timeless and lasting is a life to which we give ourselves freely in the knowledge that we will have to learn to deal with
time if we are going to live as Gods children. There are a thousand deaths involved
in tackling life on its own terms, yet this is the way to go deeper into life and to discover there the richness and the values
of loving and believing that outlast all the clocks of the universe.
Eugene. C. Kennedy, The Pain of Being Human
And we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of
love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the
only survival, the only meaning." Thornton Wilder
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love
our brothers.
I John 3:14 (NIV)
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, But yet in Love He sought me, And on His shoulders gently
laid, And home rejoicing brought me.
Henry W. Baker